e
oppressions to which the Protestant subjects of the great monarch had
been subjected. National pride readily combined with nobler impulses to
create an enthusiasm for the idea that England was the champion of the
whole Protestant cause.

There is nothing which tends to promote so kindly a feeling towards its
objects as self-denying benevolence. This had been elicited in a very
remarkable degree towards the refugees who found a shelter here after
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Londoners beheld with a sort of
humorous dismay the crowd of immigrants who came to settle among them.

Hither for God's sake and their own they fled;
Some for religion came, and some for bread.
Four hundred thousand wooden pair of shoes,
Who, God be thanked, had nothing left to lose,
To heaven's great praise, did for religion fly,
To make us starve our poor in charity.[328]

But these poverty-stricken exiles were received with warm-hearted
sympathy. No previous brief had ever brought in such large sums as those
which throughout the kingdom were subscribed for their relief; nor, if
the increase of wealth be taken into account, has there been any greater
display of munificence in our own times.[329] Churchmen of all views
came generously forward. If here and there a doubt was raised whether
these demonstrations of friendliness might not imply a greater approval
of their opinions than really existed, compassion for sufferers who were
not fellow-Christians only, but fellow-Protestants, quickly overpowered
all such hesitation. Bishop Ken behaved in 1686 with all his accustomed
generosity and boldness. In contravention of the King's orders, who had
desired that the brief should be simply read in churches without any
sermon on the subject, he ventured in the Royal Chapel to set forth in
affecting language the sufferings they had gone through, and to exhort
his hearers to hold, with a like unswerving constancy, to the Protestant
faith. He issued a pastoral entreating his clergy to do the utmost in
their power for 'Christian strangers, whose distress is in all respects
worthy of our tenderest commiseration.' For his own part, he set a noble
example of liberality in the gift of a great part of 4000_l._ which had
lately come into his possession.[330] We are told of Rainbow, Bishop of
Carlisle, that in a similar spirit he gave to French Protestants large
sums, and bore 'his share with other bishops in yearly pensions' to s